Snow White Learns Witchcraft: Stories and Poems

by Theodora Goss, Jane Yolen (Introduction)

Overview

2020 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award Winner for Adult Literature!

2020 Locus Award finalist for Best Collection

Contains "A Country Called Winter," 2020 Locus Award finalist for Best Novelette

"I was expecting this to be good, but it's wonderful. Seeing these pieces together makes me realize what a vivid, authentic and important voice Goss is. These are real fairytales, magical, unsettling, touching, and brilliant. I loved every word."
-Jo Walton, World Fantasy, Nebula, and Hugo award-winning author of Among Others

"Fairy tales are clothing, and to retell them is fashion. The fashion of these particular stories and poems is an abundance of lace, roses and porcelain contrasting with fur, snow and blood."
-Amal El-Mohtar, The New York Times

"Goss takes obvious delight in reweaving classic European folk tales to reveal new, often deeply feminist, perspectives . . . This toothsome collection is best read in one go."
-Publishers Weekly, starred review

A young woman hunts for her wayward shadow at the school where she first learned magic-while another faces a test she never studied for as ice envelopes the world. The tasks assigned a bookish boy lead him to fateful encounters with lizards, owls, trolls and a feisty, sarcastic cat. A bear wedding is cause for celebration, the spinning wheel and the tower in the briar hedge get to tell their own stories, and a kitchenmaid finds out that a lost princess is more than she seems. The sea witch reveals what she hoped to gain when she took the mermaid's voice. A wiser Snow White sets out to craft herself a new tale.

In these eight stories and twenty-three poems, World Fantasy Award winner Theodora Goss retells and recasts fairy tales by Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and Oscar Wilde. Sometimes harrowing, sometimes hilarious, always lyrical, the works gathered in Snow White Learns Witchcraft re-center and empower the women at the heart of these timeless narratives. Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master Jane Yolen, in her introduction, proclaims that Goss "transposes, transforms, and transcends times, eras, and old tales with ease. But also there is a core of tough magic that runs through all her pieces like a river through Faerie . . . I am ready to reread some of my new favorites."

More praise for Snow White Learns Witchcraft

"Theodora Goss re-fleshes and re-clothes old tales in multifarious ways. Sometimes the stories' new garments are classic and mythic, sometimes they're up-to-the-minute, twenty-first-century creations . . . Goss shines her unique light into the fairytale forest-and many bright eyes gleam back."
-Margo Lanagan, New York Times-bestselling and World Fantasy Award-winning author of Tender Morsels

"Theodora Goss's Snow White Learns Witchcraft is a gorgeous, lyric collection of fairy tale retellings. Goss has the ability-the witchcraft-to be able to see the heart of the tale, and show it, polished and reflected and new, to the reader."
-Kat Howard, Alex Award-winning author of An Unkindness of Magicians

"This collection does what the best songs and poems and spells do: slips gently into your consciousness, then slowly changes the way you see the world."
-Fran Wilde, World Fantasy, Nebula, and Hugo finalist and author of the award-winning Bone Universe trilogy

Cover art by Ruth Sanderson

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781732644007
Publisher:	Mythic Delirium Books
Publication date:	02/05/2019
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	723,570
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.51(d)

Table of Contents

A Welcome to the Coven: Introduction by Jane Yolen

Snow White Learns Witchcraft

The Ogress Queen

The Rose in Twelve Petals

Thorns and Briars

Rose Child

Thumbelina

Blanchefleur

Mr. Fox

What Her Mother Said

Snow, Blood, Fur

The Red Shoes

Girl, Wolf, Woods

Red as Blood and White as Bone

The Gold-Spinner

Rumpelstiltskin

Goldilocks and the Bear

Sleeping With Bears

The Stepsister’s Tale

The Clever Serving Maid

Seven Shoes

The Other Thea

The Sensitive Woman

The Bear’s Wife

The Bear’s Daughter

A Country Called Winter

How to Make It Snow

Diamonds and Toads

The Princess and the Frog

Conversations with the Sea Witch

The Nightingale and the Rose

Mirror, Mirror

Editorial Reviews

The collection is at its strongest when troubling the boundaries between memory and memoir, exploring the terrain between childhood and adulthood. Recurring along with bears, snow and roses are a love of Boston and Budapest, and the sadness of moving between those places, and between the phases of life they represent…I deeply appreciated the echoing patterns in the curation of the whole, with wildly varied takes on similar motifs or stories pouring color out of crystal.

The New York Times Book Review - Amal El-Mohtar

★ 12/17/2018

This lush collection artfully gathers together many of World Fantasy Award winner Goss’s fairy tale–themed poems and short fiction published over the last 16 years, including her Locus-nominated story “Red as Blood and White as Bone.” As a Hungarian-American raised on Hans Christen Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, Goss takes obvious delight in reweaving classic European folk tales to reveal new, often deeply feminist, perspectives. In “The Gold Spinner,” Rumpelstiltskin is recast as a girl lying to save herself, while “Conversations with the Sea Witch” features the Little Mermaid as an old woman looking back on a life both difficult and well-lived. In “A Country Called Winter,” a college student must come to terms with her birthright as ice threatens to overtake the world, while “Mr. Fox” explores the balance of power between lovers, and the choice to say no to a future others have laid out is celebrated in “The Princess and the Frog.” Perhaps most poignant of all, “The Nightingale and the Rose” is a beautiful, sensitive reminder that storybook love is not all it’s cracked up to be. This toothsome collection is best read in one go. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

“The elegance of Goss’s work has never ceased to amaze me. It feels effortless, but endlessly evocative and suggestive, flowing with the rhythms of both the natural world and the intimate socio-familial cosmos. Goss’s language fits together like gems in a complex crown, a diadem of images and motifs, resting gently on the head, but with a deceptive weight.”
—Catherynne M. Valente, New York Times-bestselling author of Space Opera

“In Snow White Learns Witchcraft, Theodora Goss weaves words that look disturbingly like snow and feathers into new stories that are familiar but uniquely remade. A Goss heroine breathes life into silent castles, imprints her own image in darkling mirrors, and plucks enchanted apples from the hands of peddlers; she is a bear’s bride, a newly minted queen, a thunderstorm of a woman and so much more. Dr. Goss cements her position as one of our foremost re-interpreters of fairy tales.”
—Angela Slatter, World Fantasy Award-winning author of The Bitterwood Bible

“What will you find in these pages, dear reader? Why, the encyclopedia of everything (as written by an owl), what the mirror really knows, rubies red with wolf’s blood-and, surprise!—the secret of who actually spun that straw into gold. Ice, iron, apples, birds, bones, subversion: Theodora Goss’s new collection of stories and poems Snow White Learns Witchcraft is woven of the finest spider silk, a funnel-web of faerie tales that will catch you fast and not let you go.”
—C. S. E. Cooney, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Bone Swans

From the Publisher

02/01/2019

Gr 10 Up—The author reimagines well-known fairy tales in this unique anthology of poetry and short stories. Goss revisits beloved characters, such as Snow White, Cinderella, and the Little Mermaid. Others, such as Thumbelina, Goldilocks, and even Little Red Riding Hood are recognizable yet fully refreshed in these blended stories, all with surprising twists and inventive updates. As with the original tales, many of these entries have darker themes or cruel twists. For example, "Gold Spinner" and "Snow White Learns Witchcraft" are intense, feminist tales, while "Ogress Queen" and "The Stepsister's Tale" are creepy and disturbing. Bears feature prominently; bears as foes, lovers, husbands, and ordinary citizens. Sometimes the bears are benign or sweet and other times the author skirts a darker line. The entries are grouped by folktale, putting all the variations together, allowing readers to visit different interpretations or points of view straightaway. Some of the language, sexuality, and imagery is mature. The work also features an introduction by the award-winning Jane Yolen. VERDICT An intriguing addition to any older teen or adult fairy tale or short story collection.—Kristen Rademacher, Marist High School, Chicago

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